Teleportations #2
From Pret Shoreditch High St to Veggie Pret Great Eastern St
2 June 2023
14:20
The music: ‘Finally’ by CeCe Peniston, followed by ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ by the Spice Girls.
I’m a teleporter, in the Veggie Pret on Great Eastern St. My journey began in the Shoreditch High St Pret, where I bought a cold pressed Ginger & Apple juice shot and a Scandi Style Salmon Rye Roll. I have smuggled these purchases into the Veggie Pret, where I’m now sitting downstairs, all alone, with an additional purchase of Egg & Spinach Protein Pot. When I bought the same thing at the Pret opposite the British Library I was not offered a wooden fork. I paid the eat-in tax for the Pot, with this being equal to the cost of one teleportation journey. I suppose I’ve done this the wrong way round.
I start with the ginger shot. As I twist open the lid I notice on the wall opposite a series of reviews written on postcards and placed inside bright green frames. Let me count them. Thirty-two, plus one in the centre featuring a decorative star. One review reads:
Recipe: Cocoa & Orange Pot
Comments: INCREDIBLE
Name: Jamie
The word ‘edible’ in ‘incredible’ is underlined. A different reviewer might strike through the CR.
Seated at one of the higher tables with her laptop open, another woman has joined me in this basement. I don’t want to stare at her while she’s eating, or while she’s not. TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’ plays. The speakers are near to me. I had wanted to read Harmony Holiday’s 4Columns tribute to Tina Turner on my lunch break but the music hinders my focus. I added too much salt to the spinach in my Pot. A second woman enters, sits one table away from me, and cracks open a seltzer.
A police siren sounds outside. Yesterday, on my way to therapy, I cycled past a ‘soft power’ police propaganda tent set up across from the entrance to London Fields Lido. I suppose they wanted to paint themselves as a benevolent presence in the community. I felt the anger rise up; as I’d left the house I’d received news of riot police evicting the Autonomous Winter Shelter for homeless people in Shadwell. Later in the day they issued a Section 35 in the area, putting anyone who went down to offer support at risk of arrest.
Police outside the Autonomous Winter Shelter, 88 Hardinge St, 1 June
My Scandi Roll is in my left hand. I quite like the way the bread gets slightly damp, sometimes very, which is less good. It’s the fault of the cucumber. There’s an ample dose of dill in my current bite.
The air resounds with the lyrics ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. I disagree. I think of Jasbir Puar’s work in The Right to Maim (2017); of her thesis that oppressor states intentionally keep those they oppress in long term states of debility, thereby adding to their ‘right to kill’ the ‘right to maim’. In a weakened condition one becomes more dependent. Puar takes the example of the treatment of Palestinian people by the Israeli State. (Who can Palestine depend on?) Israel produces cutting-edge assistive technologies.
I can’t stand the music down here anymore – currently ‘Boogie Wonderland’. It’s sunny outside, and dingy, windowless, down here. I’ll read about Tina Turner in Mark Street Gardens, in the remaining minutes of my lunch break.
If you listened to the first teleportation radio show you’ll have noticed that we played ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ by Tina Turner, and discussed the meaning of love as a ‘second hand emotion’; how would this compare with the second hand on a clock?
What’s Love Got To Do With Teleportation? This question appears on the back of a postcard designed by Becca Abbe. It’s my intention that people write down their answers and post them to their friends. Respond to this with your address if you’d like to receive a postcard – I’ll pop one in an envelope and send it to you for free.
Pret Teleportations postcard, designed by Becca Abbe
If you can, donate to and/or share the Autonomous Winter Shelter Solidarity Fund to sort out basic items needed urgently for people who were housed at 88 Hardinge Street and evicted by the police.
Pret Shoreditch High St
